Abstract: A 3-D wireframe model expressed in terms of nodes and vertices receives a 3-D video or like signal representative of a scene expressed in terms of a reference model, I frames and P frames. A DPCM coder takes advantage of the temporal correlation of the displacement of each vertex along every axis in the 3-D space. The 3-D signal is a set of non-zero displacements of all vertices and all nodes (sl[n, v]) at time tl. The decoded set (animation frame) of the previous instance is used as the predicted value (si-l[n, v]). The prediction error el[n, v], i.e. the difference between the current displacement set and the predicted one, is computed and quantised (el[n, v]). Finally, the quantised samples are entropy coded (ci[n, v]) using an adaptive arithmetic coding algorithm to handle the unknown data statistics. The predictive scheme described above prevents quantization error accumulation. A DPCM decoder first decodes arithmetically the received samples (‘e’ [n, v]) and computers the decoded samples (si? [n, v]).